WARNING: Rare appearance on the *other* side of the camera. And rather early in the morning. I apologise. But anyway, here I am interviewing Kevin Ashton (the guy who coined the term “Internet of Things”) about the history of creativity.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will, if it goes through, have the most far-ranging impact on UK companies since the creation of the European Union. But while the benefits to big business are clear, SMEs seem set to lose out.Continue reading →

So, Ricky Jackson has finally been released from prison, after 39 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. If I’d been convicted for murder based on a lie extracted from a child by corrupt police officers, I suspect I would have spent my four decades of incarceration plotting extensive Old Boy-style retribution. Luckily, Ricky Jackson is a far better human than I am. What a thoroughly lovely bloke.

(P.S. If there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind over why the death penalty is a really, really shite idea, cases like this will hopefully help to illuminate)

Do you have $3650 (£2285) in savings or equity? Congratulations: you’re richer than 50% of people on the planet. If that doesn’t sound like a fortune, it’s because there isn’t all that much to go around. Not when half of the world’s wealth is owned by just 1% of people.

According to the latest global wealth report published by Credit Suisse, even though overall wealth has increased dramatically from $117 trillion in 2000 to $263 trillion today, this is mostly the property of a tiny minority, which owns 48.5% of the globe’s resources. The issue is particularly stark in the UK, which is the only country in the G7 to have seen inequality rise during this century. Continue reading →

It’s a highly unlikely storyline: in 1984, a group calling themselves Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners set about fundraising for strikers in a small Welsh mining village, overcoming local prejudice and defying media ridicule to form one of the most unlikely – and powerful – allegiances in the history of civil rights. Implausible, yes. Incredibly, it’s a true story.

Kat Heathcote is not a nationalist. In fact, she’s not even Scottish – she’s a Labour-voting Welsh woman whose publishing business exports mainly to Singapore. But in Thursday’s referendum, she’s voting yes.

“Directly, it doesn’t affect my business,” she says, “[but] a country that has 60% of Europe’s oil and 20% of the world’s fish stocks should be a wealthy and successful country.”